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𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐆𝐔𝐄
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THERE'S BLOOD ON her shoes.

Alex's breath comes hot through parted lips, lungs pleading for respite as she dodges a street cart and slips into an alley. The red is already drying, coagulating into a crust on the toes of her boots, and she idly thinks it'll be a bitch to get out later.

Not that she hasn't managed before. In these shadowy side streets, puddles of blood are as common as the streaks of mud and grime. She needs to find new boots soon, anyway—these are too small for her feet, soles worn through and the toes pinching.

Deep voices bounce in the narrow street, echoing and twisting into shapeless baritones that weave their way into Alex's back alley. She ducks behind a stack of broken crates, panting, holding a hand to her mouth to cover the sound. They won't look long—the crime rate is far too high, and they're not paid enough, the MPs that the surface sends down as more of a punishment than an assignment. She's evaded them before, and she will do it a thousand more times before she dies, before she becomes one of the looted corpses in the gutters of this hellish city.

If all else fails, she'll leverage the innocence of a nine-year-old boy—her hair's shorn short and her clothes hang loose on her sun-starved frame. (The older kids, the gangs, they leave her alone more often when she looks like this, lets her voice tilt down and then crack like she's hitting the cusp of puberty.) She'll let her bottom lip quiver until the MPs decide a little kid's temper tantrum isn't worth the trouble.

But it doesn't come to that today. When the voices fade, Alex pulls her reward out of the pocket of her torn cargo pants. She lets the coins slip through her fingers, back into the pouch, and grins when she pulls out the real steal: a hunk of cheese, snagged from an unsuspecting shopkeep on the city's southeast side.

It's so sweet on her tongue that she nearly doesn't notice the slow, scraping footsteps from the opposite side of the alley.

Almost.

She shoves the cheese back into her pocket and stands, light on her feet, ready to run at a moment's notice. But the man who emerges from the shadows clearly wanted to be heard.

He holds up his hands, palms out, chuckling quietly like this is some great amusement. A hat tugged low over his brow casts his face in grayscale, but he does not need the added intimidation factor. He towers over Alex, and he hasn't bothered to hide the blades catching the sparse light—in his belt, his boot, his left pocket.

Alex takes a slow step back.

"No need to freak, kid," the man says. His voice sounds like gravel, Alex thinks, when the heel of a shoe is dragged through it. Grating. "I'm not here to pick a fight. I just think ya might be able to help me out a little, that's all."

She says nothing, but plants her feet firmly on the cracked ground, one hand on the knife in her pocket.

"See, I think that was a tidy little theft you pulled off just now." The man takes off his hat, slowly turning it in his hands by the brim. Alex is too slow to hide her gasp—not at his sharp, rough features, his sunken eyes, but at the angry red tint to his cheekbones, the tip of his nose.

He's seen the sun.

"Oh, yeah, kid," the man chuckles, and gets down on a knee. Even at half his height, Alex is minuscule in comparison. He leans an elbow on his leg, casual, and nods at her like a peace offering. "I got a job I think you might have some fun with, ya get me?" When Alex says nothing, only controls her breathing and stares into his shadowy eyes, he keeps talking. "Me 'n my crew, we don't think it's so fair all the surface-dwellin' folk get so much, compared to us. More food, more clothes, more sunlight."

A little shiver runs down Alex's spine at the thought of it, the sun.

"So we go up there," the man says, "and we nab a few things here 'n there, make sure the folk down here have what they need, too. That sound like a nice thing to do, boy?"

Alex isn't sure what makes her admit it—maybe it's that she knows this man already has her. The promise of the sun. She's already agreed, despite not saying it out loud. Maybe she's tired, hungry, sick of being seen over and through. "Girl," she says. The man blinks, and Alex straightens a bit with pride at the fact she's surprised him. "I'm a girl."

"Well," the man says. "Question still stands."

Alex nods.

"You got a name, or am I just gonna have to call you street rat?"

Here, she hesitates.

Around these parts, names don't mean much. The city's not run by a royal family line, and blood's spilled before it's treasured. But Alex has always liked her name. One of the only things she's really got left from her mama, that and her last name, the name that makes Alex the last Halverson alive in this dump. It's not worth much, but it belongs to Alex, so she lies.

"Hal."

If the man doesn't believe her, he doesn't show it. He just says, "Hal, if ya can pull off some quick thefts like that up there, I'm sure I can give ya somethin' worth your time."

The sun is already worth Alex's time, but she doesn't say that.

"I can steal my own food," she says instead, and the man chuckles. He looses a bag from his back, lets it clatter and unravel on the ground between them. Alex hadn't noticed it before. But oh, she notices now.

Grappling hooks on a rusty propeller, hollow-sounding gas canisters in a pile of leather straps. She knows exactly what this is, what it does. She's seen the older kids, the brave ones, the mean ones, zipping through the streets with metal at their hips and in their hands. Flying like birds.

She points to it. "I steal for you," she says, "and that's mine?"

The man's smile is unnervingly sharp, crooked teeth and malice. "That's right." He stands, leaving the ODM gear on the ground. "'S not just you, mind. Few kids like you bounce up to the surface for me now and again. Next time, you'll go with 'em."

"The surface," Alex echoes. Nevermind that getting to the surface isn't possible. This man has the sunburnt skin to prove her wrong. She doesn't care how it happens; she wants what he has.

And she doesn't have an awful lot to lose.

She kneels down and carefully wraps the ODM gear back up in the torn, dirty sack, ties it and slings it across her back. Then she looks up at him, and she doesn't even hide the knife in her grip, just visible at the edge of her pocket. "What's your name?"

For some reason, this makes the man laugh. Alex fights the flush on her face—she doesn't like not knowing things. Being laughed at. Feeling stupid.

"Name's Kenny," the man says, and turns to stroll down the alley. She knows without asking that she is expected to follow. "Kenny Ackermann."

◘ ◘ ◘

Six years later.

Alex leans on a stack of sun-battered crates, hood pulled low over her brow. Tapping an idle finger against the grain of the wood, she clocks the face of every passerby, catalogs the emblems on orange uniforms dotted throughout the rapidly darkening streets.

A man across the street hops off a cart and ties his horse to a fence post, then saunters off to a storefront. She waits until he's out of sight and then counts. One minute. Two. She counts the bystanders, notes which ones pay the horse any attention. Crowds in this part of town either move fast or idle with their heads down.

She whistles two times, high and then low, and pushes off the crates with a casual sigh. She picks one up as two figures in Garrison orange pass on either side of her, aiming for the unattended cart on the roadside.

"Load 'er up," Martin calls, patting the sole empty space on the back of the cart. Strands of his unruly brown hair blow in the evening's light breeze, and he irritatedly shoves them out of his eyes. The other figure, a girl, leaps into the front and grips the reins after untying the horse.

"Yah!" Carly urges the horse forward and Martin swings up beside her, guiding the horse to the edge of town, toward the warehouse tunnel.

Alex catches Martin's eye and winks before walking the other way, taking the short route between buildings to reach the rendezvous faster. Her heart dances in her ribcage, adrenaline and the last dregs of sunlight a kind of fuel even better than the food she scrounged up this morning.

It's the biggest raid they've pulled in months, and there are only five of them; Martin and Carly on the cart, Alex running point, and the new kids waiting in the shadowy warehouse, ready to funnel supplies back down. They haven't raided this area frequently, the southernmost portion of Trost, but the streets Alex walks now are a far cry from the prosperity within Wall Rose even a few years ago.

The tragedy of Shiganshina had refugees flooding into the second rung. Where before Alex stole sacks of food and crates of supplies without much issue, now something roils in her gut as she passes children whining on street corners, complaining to haggard-looking parents of hunger. The overpopulation runs wild without Wall Maria in tact, and any decent-sized raids have been few and far between as a result.

But a few crying kids is nothing Alex hasn't seen—nothing Alex hasn't been—before. Life in Wall Rose is still a hell of a lot more of a life than it is in the Underground.

The cart arrives moments before she does, and Martin and Carly look flushed and hurried. "Guy we stole the horse from is lookin'," Martin says in rushed explanation as he starts hauling crates and sacks from the back of the cart into the waiting arms of two younger undercity kids, a boy and a girl. Alex doesn't remember their names. Doesn't want to.

"Go, go, go," Carly murmurs, red hair a mess as she and Alex drag the last of the supplies into the warehouse. The younger kids secure them in the netting and disappear into the passageway, one on each end.

And then she hears the hoofbeats.

"Fuck!" Carly growls, raking a hand through her hair and dismantling her bun in the process. She and Martin look back at the cart simultaneously.

If they leave it here, the Garrison will find the passage, and this route can never be used again.

She imagines Kenny's sneer, the bitter reek of alcohol on his breath as he leans in and whispers threats in her ear. Can't have that, can we, Hal? Where ya gonna get my whiskey from, the cozy ol' interior?

Because Kenny doesn't give a flying fuck about redistributing the supplies down below. Why should he? He's got freedom aboveground anytime he wants it. He just wants to peddle goods for exorbitant undercity prices, wants to steal from the hand that feeds him, wants power and networks and quick, sneaky kids under his thumb. Alex isn't stupid. She knows Kenny works for the crown in one way or another. That doesn't mean he's loyal to it.

If the question is the safety of one of his street rats or the integrity of a supply route, there's not a doubt in the whole Underground which one Kenny will pick.

Leave the cart, sacrifice the route. Escape the Garrison. Hold her breath as Kenny drags the dull side of a dirty blade across her throat.

She's been righteous one too many times already, in Kenny's book. This time, he might snap.

She can't afford it. Neither can the others. Kenny hasn't let his punishments loose on the new kids yet, and Carly and Martin don't need more scars.

"Fuckin' hell," Alex mutters. She's running before the others can start, leaping into the front of the cart and snatching up the reins.

Martin grabs her by the elbow, amber eyes flashing. "What the hell are you doing?"

"You're wearing Garrison," she snaps, and gestures down at her ragged, nondescript cloak. "What do you think they'll worry about more, a military infiltration or a refugee desperate enough to steal a horse?"

"Hal—"

"She'll just get deported anyway," Carly snaps, dragging Martin back into the warehouse. "We'll meet up later."

"If they don't beat her within an inch of her life first," Martin protests, but he stumbles after Carly as she disappears into the warehouse with one more hesitant glance Alex's way.

No changing her mind now. She may as well go out with a bang.

"Giddyup, girl," Alex calls, snapping the reins twice. "Let's give these fuckers a run for their money."

"You!" a voice thunders from behind her, hoofbeats getting faster and faster. "Hey! Halt!"

She lets her hood fall as the cart careens around the corner, and she laughs into the open air and looks up at the moon.

She doesn't know when she'll next get the chance.

◘ ◘ ◘

a/n: fuck kenny all my homies hate kenny

guys alex is IN FOR IT. girl has no idea what's about to hit her

anyway look at this ai-generated art of lil martin and carly

i'm so pumped for y'all to see the art of older alex i'm in love with it

[ word count | 2.2k ]